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Spanish Church leaders concerned about government secularisation

Spanish Church leaders voiced concern for their country’s future after the government pledged to legalise euthanasia, secularise education and strip the Church of “improper assets”.

“Spain faces a critical situation, a true emergency for our future,” Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera of Valencia told Catholics in a pastoral letter. He asked that special prayers and Masses be held in Spain “as long as this uncertain future remains unclarified”.

The letter, dated 4th January, was circulated just before Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez formally took office on 8th January at the head of a coalition government, the first since Spain’s 1978 restoration of democracy. Sanchez had been caretaker prime minister since early 2019.

Cardinal Canizares said his warnings were not “rhetoric or sterile drama,” but a call for the Church to “testify to Christ in words and deeds” and help “build a new mentality and a new Spain”.

Another archbishop said he was asking Mary to ‘save Spain’.

Archbishop Jesus Sanz Montes of Oviedo said in a tweet: ‘Uncertainty is drawn on the horizon, but we know the sun will rise behind the clouds and storms…The sun will bring back colour after all the clumsiness, lies and vanity which beset us.’

Picture: A woman prays during Mass in favour of the traditional family unit in central Madrid in this 2011 file photo. Spanish church leaders voiced concern for their country’s future after the government pledged to legalise euthanasia, secularise education and strip the Church of “improper assets”. (CNS photo/Susana Vera, Reuters).